Easier said than done
by Spock99
Summary: Albus Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard of his age, messed up. His plans for becoming a ghost after his death were well thought of. But apparently not quite as well thought through. The headmaster sees how strange becoming a ghost can be.


**A/N**

**Written for the QLFC semi-finals season 7, by Chaser 1 of Falmouth Falcons**

**Prompts:**

**Call of the Wild: A character makes changes in order to adapt to a new environment (social environment, physical environment, etc)**

**(character) Myrtle**

**(emotion) confused**

**(plot point) a funeral**

* * *

There was silence. Not a comfortable kind of silence, but a strange, tight, yet gentle kind of silence. There were emotions running around the air, mostly sorrow, grief, and despair. But everything was as if experienced from far away. 

The state of the headmaster's soul couldn't be described easily. It was not nothingness nor was it a reality. He wasn't aware of himself, and he couldn't tell where exactly he was. If he actually was? 

There was something floating in between worlds, something that had been part of Albus Dumbledore not long ago. It waited for the moment to break free and—yes, do what? Exist again? Albus Dumbledore had taken precautions for becoming a ghost, but in this very moment, there was no conscious thought to lead the way along an ancient theory, nothing that could start the process. Only silence. 

Then, after a while, something came to life. Something small and not quite secure. A small, white light that finally made the soul, that had been existing unseen, come back to reality. The little flame grew and grew. It became brighter and higher, without radiating warmth or anything else. It just was. 

There still was no conscious thought in the flame but there were beginnings of shapes, of memories, of Albus Dumbledore returning. The flame soon encircled the whole corpse, then the marble table on which it lay. The brighter it got, the more memories flooded back into the spirit emerging from the flames. 

The shape got more defined with the second, and Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was almost there. He could hear the gasps of shock from the crowd, the shouts and astonished sounds. He could see them! 

And then, just before he was back, the flames died down abruptly. Suddenly it was dark. Not dark because it was late at night, no. Dark because the white, piercing flames were gone and left everything grey and dark in comparison. After the shocked silence ended, the people marveled at the white marble now surrounding the body of the deceased headmaster. Shortly after, they left for the castle. 

They left, even if somewhere in between the realms Albus Dumbledore was screaming for them to stay, to welcome him back. But he was not here nor there. He knew he was, but there was no physical shape he could touch. Wasn't that normal for a ghost? No, a ghost should have been—solid might be the wrong word—but more solid than the fog he was now! 

He couldn't see in the literal sense; he could feel and guess his surroundings in a more than weird way. Determined to find the reason for this problem, the mist, that was the solidified soul of one of the greatest wizards of his age, began to waft uphill to Hogwarts castle. 

The moment Albus passed the front doors—passed through them—was confusing. He felt the solid wood somehow, but it felt like it was just a little breeze on a summer day that blocked the entrance instead of a high, solid, wooden door. 

Albus asked himself what all this meant. He was supposed to roam the castle he had loved so much during his lifetime as a ghost now. A ghost-like the Bloody Baron and Sir Nicholas and all the others. 

A second breeze caught the mist that was Albus, and before he knew it, the soul was though a few walls. He looked over the vast number of his students gathered in the Great Hall, mourning his earthly form. He tried shouting, waving, jumping in the air but no one noticed him. They should, though! He was a ghost, almost at least. Why didn't they see or hear him? 

With another cool breeze, Albus' soul passed through the ceiling of the Great Hall and lost sight of his children. Panic gripped him and he tried to somehow get down again but failed. 

Steering was harder than he had thought. Could a soul steer its way? A soul in the form of a mini cloud of invisible mist, no less? 

And another wall, and another and a floor. The confusion spread further and further through the 'mind' of the mist that was Albus. Something like that wasn't supposed to happen. Why did the whole becoming a ghost thing not work? 

The sensation as the headmaster's soul passed through a floor covered with tiles on the other side was frightening. The sudden change in material made him feel dizzy. Albus Dumbledore didn't understand anything at all. Why did this bother him so much? The ghosts always seemed to just float through solid stone without any form of discomfort. 

While he was busy analyzing his situation, the mist had wafted almost under the ceiling of the bathroom. He struggled to stay on one level and not pass another ceiling/floor construct. 

"Think of sinking lower, headmaster!" he suddenly heard a small voice from below. There was at least someone who could see him! He started yelling in relief to confirm his assumption but was interrupted by the voice again. 

"Ohhh, there you are, sir," the female voice cooed. "Hmmm, it looks like you are not quite ready." 

"Ready for what?" Albus screamed, still uncertain if the voice could hear him as well. 

"Can you hear me?" he asked, equally loudly. 

"Of course I can hear you, headmaster. You are yelling loud enough." The voice announced and started giggling. Albus' thoughts were racing. Who, by Merlin's socks, could hear and see him? It had to be a ghost. A female ghost… 

"Ms. Warren? Myrtle Warren?" He asked after some seconds. The giggling stopped abruptly as the addressed ex-student gasped in surprise. 

"Yes, sir, that's my name." Another chuckle came from her. 

"What is all this about, Myrtle?" the headmaster asked. Better to be on familiar terms with the girl. He was bound to live with all the ghosts anyway. 

"Why am I not a real ghost like you and all the others?" Confusion and panic settled in his stomach…He didn't have a stomach...settled within him again. 

"Oh, isn't it a lovely day to come back from the dead?" the Ravenclaw said instead of answering all his questions. She giggled again, and Albus felt her come nearer, circling him where he floated, wherever that was. 

"Yes, Myrtle, but could you…" 

"Oh, the sun is shining so beautifully through the window; I can see it, almost feel the warmth!" Myrtle sighed in longing while the headmaster's soul was still desperately trying to find out what his problem was. 

"Myrtle!" he called. But the steady stream of nonsense coming from the ghost was unstoppable. 

"You should come to the prefects' bathroom, headmaster, the colored window there makes a gorgeous light, and with the bubbles in the bath, no less." 

"Myrtle!" Albus roared. The girl startled violently and turned her attention back to him. 

"Why, yes, sir. Whatever might be the problem?" she asked innocently, a hint of amusement in her tone. 

"The problem? The problem is I am not a ghost as I should be!" the mist said annoyed."Could you please help me, Myrtle?" 

"Ohhhh, yes! It would be my honor to help you, sir," she said."But we should float down to the ground, it is rather uncomfortable up here." 

"How?" Albus sighed. Perhaps he should go and find another ghost, one more willing to help him out of this? 

"Oh, just think about floating downwards. That will be the easiest way, of course." she smiled and promptly started floating towards the sinks. 

Albus did his best to think. But then he asked himself what exactly was thinking right now. It wasn't like he had a brain of sorts. Ghosts were supposed to exist out of the memories and skills the witch or wizard possessed in his lifetime. He had never been floating. Not that he remembered, anyway. 

_Down. Down. Down, now._ Albus repeated the words like a mantra over and over and at the third try, he really felt himself sink lower. 

"Myrtle, why am I this sort of cloud no one can see?" he questioned the girl as soon as he hovered near her. She was smiling. 

"Well done, sir!" she said joyfully. Then her face grew earnest again. "Normally it takes time for a soul to develop a physical form after death. Haven't you read up on that?" 

Albus thought for a moment. He had read about that, but he didn't know why it took so long. The book had mentioned the process could be a bit longer depending on the time of day one's soul got free. 

"Has that something to do with the time?" he asked the ghost. To his surprise, the girl started laughing. 

"Oh, no, sir. Nothing at all. You made the same mistake as the Bloody Baron. He was stuck in that misty form for over six weeks." She laughed again, now over the perplexed feelings coming from the mist. 

"What? Six weeks? But why?" 

Myrtle actually stopped laughing for long enough to answer: "You were too occupied to choose the outfit your ghostly form will be wearing. The Bloody Baron spent three days in front of his wardrobe until he decided to let a tailor make him some new clothes." 

"I didn't take that long!" the headmaster-cloud said. "I just wanted my purple robe with the little stars on it and…" 

"See, too long." Myrtle chuckled. "Oh, bless my quick death. I could not choose. You, on the other hand, knew you would die. Looks like you knew it for a long time, sir." 

"Well, yes. When will I turn completely, Myrtle?" Dumbledore asked. He was still confused by all this. Why was the choice of clothes that fatal? 

"Oh, that I cannot say, headmaster. But be certain to stage it in the Great Hall. Your school will be overjoyed to have you back." With that, she floated upwards again and disappeared through the ceiling. 

The mist that was the headmaster stayed where he was. He was just supposed to wait until the process was finished? But for how long? What should he do until then, and how could he know when it was done? 

* * *

"I told you, Albus, becoming a ghost is not for the faint of heart, indeed," Sir Nicholas said while he was hovering in front of a fireplace in one of the unused classrooms. Why did this one have a fireplace at all? 

"Yes, Nick. But when?" It had been two weeks since the funeral and Albus Dumbledore was still a little cloud of headmaster-soul. A visible one now, but still a cloud. 

"That, my dear friend, I can't tell." The nearly-headless man chuckled deeply in his throat and made his way through a wall. 

Once again, Albus was left to his own devices. The ghosts had an annoying habit of stopping conversations without any hint beforehand. They just floated off. 

Everything they had told him about his misty form was: "Wait until it gets better." He was supposed to be waiting day in and out without a clue when to turn into the ghost he wanted to be. The afterlife was weird. 

Some more days passed, without much change. The light blue-grey color of the cloud became a few shades darker, and he was almost the same color as the other ghosts by now. 

Albus hadn't shown himself to anyone, yet. If he was honest, he was embarrassed to fail such a task. He knew very well Minerva and Filius and Severus and Pomona wouldn't make fun of him. He just wanted to surprise them in his glorious robes. The damned robes that had caused his dilemma. 

He wanted to make them happy. The headmaster had decided to show himself only when he was truly a ghost, no earlier than that. 

Of course, he had seen the sorrow-stricken faces of Hogwarts' inhabitants. And it made him glow with pride and feel guilty at the same time. 

He spent his days and nights floating through the castle unseen, observing his school. He talked a lot to Myrtle as she seemed to be the only ghost to not have much connection to the others. She mostly stayed in her bathroom. 

When, after almost two weeks, Albus' ghostly body started to form, Myrtle started imagining his appearance to the Hogwarts crowd. 

"You could just emerge from somewhere. Or you could sing and dance in the corridors. Or…" 

And on and on she went. Albus let her while he was gaining back his sight, and grinning like a loon over his robe that had started to form on his now visible chest. 

At the end of one of those conversations with Myrtle, The Ravenclaw girl stopped her monologue over her own death with a scream. 

Albus startled, as he had been in thoughts again. He looked up at the girl in front of him. Myrtle was floating a little above him, screaming and laughing and dancing in the air. 

"You're here, you're here, you're finally here." Albus wasn't sure what she meant by that. A moment later, everything clicked into place and he looked down at himself. 

Indeed, his body was now of the pale blue-grey color that was the color of ghosts. 

"I'm here." He whispered happily. Had he been alive still, there would have been tears in his eyes. But, as a ghost, there was only the feeling of happiness surging through his being. 

"What time is it, Myrtle?" he asked hastily. The little ghost was still swirling lazily around herself in the air as she answered. 

"Almost time for dinner, sir. Ohhh, what if they have pudding today?" 

"I am sure they will have some, my dear. And perhaps some lemon drops?" 

Albus said and started to float to the wall. 

He could now turn easily, drift up and down as he pleased and right there he had just walked out of the conversation. It seemed to be a ghost-thing. 

Excited like on the first day of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore floated towards the Great Hall. Shortly before he reached the doors, he floated downwards and disappeared into the ground. He made his way to the front of the Hall underground. Then he floated upwards again and emerged from right behind Minerva McGonagall. 

"Would you mind passing me the lemon drops, Minerva?" he asked as he hovered next to the elderly Gryffindor. 

Absentmindedly, Minerva reached for the tin on the table and placed it right next to him. "Of course, Alb…" 

Then a shriek tore from her throat as she saw him there, floating next to her. 

"Is that you Albus?" she asked, perplexed. At his nod, a huge, tearful smile lit up her features. 

"Oh, Merlin, you really came back a ghost," she said. After that, turmoil broke loose in the Great Hall as students and staff alike processed the events of the last few minutes. 

Soon a chorus of "Dumbledore, Dumbledore, Dumbledore!" could be heard throughout the room as a hundred voiced celebrated the return of their headmaster. 

The ghost of the evening smiled at the welcome but excused himself after only an hour of socializing. 

"I am sorry, Minerva. But I have to find Severus." 

With that, he floated along the middle aisle between the house tables and left the Great Hall, like a civilized human, through the door. Through the closed door. 


End file.
